Schindler’s List is still considered one of Steven Spielberg’s masterpieces and won seven Oscars in 1994, including the trophies for Best Director and Best Picture. The difficult subject of the Holocaust made the historical drama a film that Spielberg was afraid of, but it paid off because the director later described it as “best film I have ever made“. There is only one thing about his work that he still doesn’t understand.
“Why?”: Schindler’s List still puzzles Steven Spielberg to this day
Steven Spielberg’s biographical film follows the industrialist Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), who runs a factory with around 150 Jewish workers in Krakow during World War II. So that they don’t fall victim to the Nazis, he passes off even untrained employees as qualified specialists. He ultimately saves the lives of over 1,000 Jewish peopleby saving them from deportation to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
UIP
Steven Spielberg with Liam Neeson on the set of Schindler’s List
In a major interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Spielberg recently looked back on Schindler’s List and revealed:
The biggest mystery I [in Schindlers Liste] could never solve is this: Why did Schindler do it? Why did he risk his life and sacrifice nine percent of the money he had accumulated to buy his workers from Amon Göth and finally release them into freedom? The open question in Schindler’s List still bothers Spielberg to this day
Did the businessman Oskar Schindler discover his conscience and his charity in the face of the terrible acts of the Nazis? According to Spielberg, the man’s motivation remains also in the heavily fact-based book Schindler’s Ark * (in German: Schindler’s List *) by Thomas Keneally in the dark.
UIP
Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler in Schindler’s List
Spielberg showed with a comparison how much this still concerns the filmmaker even after 30 years. He draws on another famous work of film history, in which a word at the end of the film sums up the main character:
Every time I see my Rosebud sled hanging on the wall I think, ‘I had that one Rosebud momentwhich Orson Welles found for Citizen Kane, never in Schindler’s List.
More on the subject of Oscar films:
Oskar Schindler died in Hildesheim, Germany, in 1974. It is unknown whether he ever gave specific reasons for his actions. In 1967 he was honored by the Israeli Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem with the high distinction of “Righteous Among the Nations” for saving the forced laborers.
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